"Yeah," he said quietly. The butterfly flitted off, but Tristan continued to stare after it.
"What about your dad?"
A derisive scoff escaped Tristan's mouth. Cade held his breath, wondering if he'd pushed too far.
"He wasn't around much when I was little and disappeared completely when Natalie was a baby. It was just the three of us, then just the two of us. And now …"
Tristan's breath caught at the end, and he choked down the rest of his sentence. Cade felt an unfamiliar impulse to say or do something comforting, but he was no good with words or affection.
"I'm sorry. That sucks."
Pressing his lips into a flat line, Tristan nodded, but didn't speak, and Cade stood there awkwardly for several seconds, wondering what the fuck he should say or do. When Tristan started walking again, he trailed behind, debating whether it was better to stay silent or change the subject.
God, why was he so bad at conversation?
They had hiked about a half mile when Tristan motioned to a hollowed-out tree trunk. "Look carefully," he whispered. "There's a possum in that tree cavity."
Squinting, Cade could just make out a small, gray snout and pink nose. "I thought possums only came out at night."
"They sometimes search for food during the day. We might have scared him."
Cade studied Tristan's back — and okay fine, his ass too — as they continued walking. "How do you know so much about animals? Or are you just making this shit up?" he asked suspiciously.
Chuckling, Tristan said, "No, I'm not making it up. When I was young, I learned a lot about animals in general, not just butterflies. I wanted to be a zoologist."
"Yeah? What made you change your mind?"
"When I took my first journalism class in college, I kind of got hooked on that, and the idea of a zoology career faded away. Journalism lit me up, excited me. Until recently, I had dreams of being a famous investigative journalist who broke huge stories about corporate fraud or government cover-ups. You know, someone who would fight for the little people, for justice, try to right wrongs."
"Kind of like what we do," Cade observed.
Tristan considered for a moment before agreeing, "Yeah, I guess so."
"You don't want that anymore?"
"I don't know. I didn't realize it was so dangerous, I guess," he answered with a small huff.
"Dangerous?"
With his face angled away, Cade could only see Tristan's profile. He seemed to be thinking, and Cade didn't dare interrupt.
"I think my mentor was killed," he finally said.
"What?"
Tristan's eyes skittered away, staring off into the distance.
"My mentor, Sebastian Donnally. I interned for him at the television station. He was investigating missing girls, and I think he was onto something. He told me his theory about trafficking, then said some weird things, like not to trust the local police. I didn't believe him at first. He was old, maybe seventy, and to be honest, I thought he was losing it."
The redhead paused and finally faced Cade, his features drawn and sad. "But about six months ago, he seemed off, jumpy, disheveled. He wouldn't talk to me anymore, just shooed me off, closed himself in his office. He turned up dead shortly after that. His car went off the road into a pond, and he drowned. The police called it an accident. The station gave me his job when he died," he laughed bitterly.
"Anyway, I wondered if he found something important, if he got too close to figuring out who took the girls, and they, you know …"
He wanted to tell Tristan it wasn't true, but he knew all too well it could be. "It's possible."
"Yeah," Tristan agreed, turning away from him again. "Anyway, so when Natalie disappeared, that was my first thought. That they'd trafficked her."
Cade nodded. He would have come to the same conclusion.
